Joe

It's the end of another football season and the Super Bowl is at hand.

In 1965 when I was a young teenager of 14, I admired New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath perhaps more than anyone living at that time. This admiration was a combination of a newly pubescent boy, and a insanely popular playboy athlete. It was not purely coincidental that upon the floor of Namath's bachelor pad there rested an expensive, decadent llama-skin rug while at the same time my sock drawer was lined with fake fur from a couple of torn-apart winter gloves. I wanted to be like Joe, even if I couldn't.

In the mid 1960s there were better choices than Joe for personal admiration. There was John Glenn and Martin Luther King Jr., to quickly name two. But I had not seen either Glenn or King throw a fifty yard pass in front of 60,000 cheering fans, let alone fend-off countless beautiful women. Fact is; Joe Namath was probably not even the best quarterback of his day. His football career overlapped the careers of such Hall of Famers as Bart Starr, Johnny Unitas, Sonny Jurgensen. Terry Bradshaw and Roger Staubach. But none of them had the off-field charisma of Joe Willie.

The idolization did not last long; perhaps a football season or two, but right there at that critical stage of my young life, it was going full blast.

Namath retired from football in the mid 70's at a fairly young age. He had bad knees almost his entire career and eventually they brought his playing days to an end. By then his wild popularity had waned and within a few years he was mostly forgotten by both pop America, and by me.

In recent years Namath has occasionally reemerged in the public eye, sometimes in embarrassment. A few years ago during a football game, an aging, drunken Joe Namath flirted with an attractive female media member during an ill-conceived interview. Other appearances have been more positive, thankfully.

It has been fifty years since Joe Namath's rookie season. He seems in good health. He is trim, lucid, and his damaged knee joints have been replaced with artificial ones. But gone are the cheering crowds. His picture has long since disappeared from magazine covers. The groupies have gathered elsewhere. No more crowds of girls. Aside from the occasional reunion, the comradery with teammates is a thing of the past. I hope the older Joe is happy.

I am no longer 14, but I still remember the young Joe Namath and the dubious effect he had on me. I suppose the truth is; I am still something of a fan. I'm a big enough fan that I thought of him this morning... as I was pulling on my fur-lined gloves.  

My Friend the Internet

I was born in 1951. I'd have to think about it but it is very possible that, in my opinion, the internet is finest invention to come along in my lifetime. The computer and antibiotics proceeded my birth, as did the television.

Not every First World citizen would agree with my assessment, of course, particularly older folks. I have some older friends who know nothing of the Net, and don't want to know. And there are others who are internet literate but simply have other interests.

The internet now takes up more of my leisure time than does its rival; the television. In fact, I think the internet might be winning at a 2 to 1 ratio. Part of it is that I often watch TV shows on the Net, particularly shows from the distant past such as It Takes a Thief, Combat!, and Maverick. I watch a lot of Youtube educational videos too. Yesterday I clicked onto a video taken from inside of a WWII B-17 in flight. That was kind of cool.

I keep in contact with a lot of old friends over the internet, either through email, or Facebook. I know what many of my high school classmates are up to these days, thanks to the internet. These were classmates 45 years ago. Such a thing was unheard of, pre Net. Unfortunately, through the internet I have been made aware of the those who have died too.

I pay my bills on the Net. I rarely write a check anymore. I've made all kinds of reservations over the internet too. I've made doctor appointments. In fact, I've gotten doctors' opinions over the internet.

But the thing I like most about the Net is just playing and/or making a nuisance out of myself. In my case, playing, and being a nuisance, are kind of one and the same. I actually have some social "causes", none of which I would have engaged in if not for the ease of the Net and the anonymity it provides. So now and then I will click into some interactive internet forum or website, just to straighten out some misguided folks. Of course I'm not so serious about any of my causes that I would insult or cuss out someone online. I am "playing" after all. Still, there is nothing quite so invigorating as telling people how to think, specifically how to think about religion, race, and the environment. Sometimes I will even get philosophical over the internet. The philosophical things I confer may be ignored, as they are in my real life offline, but when they are posted on the Net, I don't know that my musings are ignored. It is a kind of odd, blissful ignorance, all thanks to my friend; the internet.  

 

A Door, Past and Present

When I was sixteen the Doors, a legendary late 60s to early 70s rock band, came out with their first album which contained the epic single Light My Fire. The year was 1967. I would sing along with Jim Morrison when the song came on the car radio. I found that I could drop my regular speaking voice down a half octave and do a reasonable job on the song; just so long as the car engine and the sound of traffic drowned out the glaring imperfections. A few years later my voice had matured a little and I could do a presentable job singing the Doors' Touch Me. If memory serves me correctly, I actually performed the song in a duet with Morrison in front of a girlfriend, Morrison on the radio, of course.

My imagination has always been able to take me into other dimensions. Back in the late 60s I would listen to Light My Fire and imagine myself fronting the Doors in a giant auditorium of crazed high school students, most of whom being attractive girls. I would not only sing, I would also have a guitar strapped over my shoulders and would play that too. I was both Jim Morrison and Robby Krieger.

It is now 2015. All of the Doors' songs have been remaster and sound terrific. They are readily available for listening on Youtube. No need to do anything other than occasionally remain patient through an annoying, intrusive, 15 second commercial. I do not get Youtube on my car radio so I will listen to the Doors on my home computer. It is equipped with a decent sound system so the remastered songs sound pretty good.

A lot has changed over the years but not the power of my imagination. In 2015 I am still performing Doors music and as always, I sound exactly like the Doors. How could I not sound like them since it is remastered Doors recordings that fuel these flights of fancy. But I am no longer performing with them. I am now in an unnamed band that has an older lady on keyboards, a younger guy on bass, and a younger woman on drums. I think the more youthful woman on drums is a nice touch. It's sort of progressive, in its own way.

In my typical daydreamed concert we are performing at a small venue with a stage in front of several dozen circular tables. The audience is my piers, that is; older people. There is a lot of gray hair and many pairs of bifocals. In fact, before the band dives into song, I, as band spokesman, warn the people, "you'd better be prepared to get hit with some good, old-fashion, energetic rock n' roll because that's what you're are about to hear." I click on the Youtube "play" button and the daydreamed concert begins.

By the end of the second or third song I often envision younger folks stopping to listen. They stand beyond the tables, behind the seated older people. They are obviously impressed, perhaps even overwhelmed, and maybe even shocked that "old stuff" can be so rousing and dynamic.

Once, in a reflective moment, I looked out to the young listeners and saw a familiar face. I could not quite tell for sure but it looked as if he were staring right at me with this terrified look on his face. That kid was me, of course, forty-three years ago. Sorry to disappoint you kid.

    

Crystal and Me

I would like to write in this idiotic blog more often but one of the problems is that most of what I would want to say has to do with getting older, being older, or some variation thereof. I have never really wanted to be so narrow in my blog interests and so I have posted relatively infrequently, not that anyone has complained, mind you.

Well, Christmas came about a week ago and I received a book as a gift. It's by Billy Crystal the comedian, actor, and sometime philosopher. I would tell you the name of the book but that would require that I stand and walk about twenty feet, so I will let you find that out for yourself.

I have always been sort of lukewarm on Crystal. He's funny, but in a decidedly Jewish sort of way. As a guy in his 60s, I'm only too familiar with such folks as Sid Caesar and Milton Berle. Also, I'm not much of a reader. I prefer television. But I decided I'd open the book and read a few pages. Anyway, I've got to tell you that about ten pages in, it's not a bad read. What's more, up to page 11 the theme is pretty much about getting old, specifically the downsides, of which there are many.

Not only has the book been a bit comforting in and of itself, but it has convinced me that if I want to write a blog entry concerning the tribulations of aging, I ought to go ahead and write it. Anyway, what I'm saying is that for those who have avoided this blog in the past, the future might give you all the more reason. We'll see.

Staying After School

On this past Friday afternoon I visited Mrs. Virginia Gilbert, a.k.a Miss Plimell. Miss Plimell was my 2nd and 3rd grade teacher. That was 1958 to 1960, a long long time ago. I was in the 2nd grade and Miss Plimell was in her second year of teaching. She was in her mid twenties.

I knocked on her door and her husband answered. He was an older gentleman and her second husband. The first one died about seven or eight years ago after something like 47 years of marriage. Dangling from my hand was a holiday gift bag containing a jar of raspberry preserves. I told him that it was a gift for Virginia. He asked me if I wanted to give it to her personally, and I said I would love to, if it were no trouble. He led me to a back room in the house that had a television. There she was, sitting in a recliner; my long ago teacher, Miss Plimell.

She is no longer 25, of course, nor was she in amazing health, but we chatted for a couple of hours. She is still pretty sharp for a person near 80. She remembered not only me, but many of her old students, who were my first classmates. I filled her in on what some of us were doing, and who had died. She had a few stories of her own concerning some of those students. She talked about her life and some of what had transpired through all the years. I was glad to listen, after all, she was one of my first teachers, and the only teacher I had for two years.

Anyway, she seemed glad to see me, believe it or not, and she asked me to return. I promised her I would. I will keep that promise.    

My Career Paradigm

This blog entry is really going to be just one long whine, so I'm warning any person unfortunate enough to come along its words not to read them. Okay, you've been warned.

I work at The Ohio State University. I started my employment there in 1974. I have always worked in the University Mail Department. We collect inter-campus mail, sort it, then redistribute it across the campus. In 1974 there was no email, consequently we were the communication hub of the university. Every morning five mail carriers would invade with a vengeance the university's approximately 120 buildings; hurriedly collecting the inter-campus mail. They would then return to headquarters where we would rapidly sort the mail for redelivery that same day. It could be argued that other than the university's various hospital departments, and the university police, we were the most important non-academic department at the university. More important than the landscaping or maintenance departments.

Things have changed. There were buildings that would receive several thousand inter-campus letters, flyers, etc., every day. That was once upon a time. Those same buildings now receive a few dozen. We have been murdered by the advent of email. This is not a new thing. We've been limping along for at least a decade. For ten years it has looked as if the higher-ups could close down our department at anytime. But that is not my complaint. My whining really starts now.

The guys I work with these days know our department is unimportant. Those in charge know the same thing, consequently the department is often assigned inferior employees when job openings arise. We no longer have a supervisor in our work area. Add these factors together and you end up with a lot of ugliness.

One day one of our delivery guys had a box weighing a few pounds to be delivered that day on his route. That guy was scheduled to take a vacation day the following day. I watched him pickup the box and evaluate its weight. He placed the box back on the counter and for a few seconds he just eyed it as his mind contemplated. Finally he muttered aloud, "I'm going to let this package wait until tomorrow's delivery."

I heard myself instantly bark, "No, you're delivering it today."

My uninspired coworker mumbled back, "It can go tomorrow. It doesn't make any difference whether it is today or tomorrow."

"Take it today," I ordered.

Just to be clear, I am a semi-retired, non supervisory, part time employee. But I guess even nobodies can get fed up.

To be fair, genuinely good employees treat the department with abject disrespect too. One afternoon there was inter-campus mail to be sorted but instead of doing that work, one of the truly hard working guys was sweeping the floor in the hallway. The hallway floor had a higher priority than did the mail.

This is hard for me to take; thus, this blog entry. What I find curious is that I should care enough for it to occasionally get my blood boiling. As I have said; the department clearly does not have high status, and I have never been a career-oriented guy. My self-worth, what there is of it, I have always gotten from other aspects of life. Still, shirking assigned duties can get me riled.

The good news is that I cannot go on much longer. This pain will soon end. I have been financially able to fully retire for a long time. I'm at the point where I no longer feel like setting the alarm at 6 AM without good reason. And of course the department itself is on its last legs. Still, I fall into distress with what my eyes behold. I have been victimized by a paradigm shift via technology. I might as well be assembling 8-track tape players alongside slipshod coworkers. Actually, that might be rather amusing.

Good Bye Pennies

There aren't very many common, everyday items I hate more than a penny. I've hated them for years. I have hated two pennies more than one penny, and three pennies more than two pennies, but there has always been a number, a tipping point where the pennies became tolerable due to their sheer numbers. For me, I think it has been approximately 10 pennies. I'd rather have ten pennies than no pennies. Of course I would quickly convert the pennies to a dime.

My hatred of the penny goes back to high school. In my high school, picking up a penny from the floor was considered very uncool. I was uncool enough without making matters worse, consequently I refrained from rescuing the wayward one-cent coin.

After my high school days, I went into the American work force. I bought a lot of snacks out of vending machines. Excluding the gumball machine, I know of no self-respecting vending machine that ever took a penny. Even when candy bars were a dime long ago, a candy machine would refuse a penny.

There is nothing so exasperating as feeling a hunger for an 85 cent bag of potato chips only to discover that the massive amount of change in your pocket is a quarter, four nickels, and six pennies. This happened to me a few days ago. I glared at those copper coins with hatred and frustration. They did not go back into my pocket.

Early this afternoon while at my workplace, I was pulling some keys out of a pocket when a couple of coins came out with the keys. I did not see the coins but I felt them land upon my shoe. Since they were not readily visible upon the floor, and coins being coins, I knew they had rolled under a nearby table. Not knowing the value of the escaped coinage, I decided to give a quick search under the table. After exploring around for thirty seconds or so on my hands and knees, I spotted two pennies. I immediately realized that I had lost a half minute of my life to two pennies, pennies which I did not bother to retrieve. To make matters worse, I hit my head on the underside of the table as I was backing out from under it. None of this modest tragedy would have transpired had my pockets been free of pennies.

At 1:06 PM today I made the decision to forever vanquish pennies from my person, automobile cupholders, and any other place where one or more pennies might be secured. From now on I will leave pennies in the change tray at grocery stores. Small numbers of pennies owed me will be charitably rejected.

I have quickly done the math and I figure if I live to be 95 (25 more years), and spurn all pennies until that time, I will be forfeiting approximately $4.62, depending on inflation. With a hatred like mine; it's worth the sacrifice.